


Counterpoint

by SmashingTeacups



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Can Jamie Stop Losing His Children Please?!, Claire Forever Tending Jamie's Wounds, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Never Enough Jamie and Claire, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 23:26:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17672141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmashingTeacups/pseuds/SmashingTeacups
Summary: The missing scene from 4x13 (and DOA!) we all wanted, after Young Ian chooses to stay with the Mohawk and J&C leave Roger undecided in the clearing. On the road later that evening, Jamie broods; Claire has none of it.





	Counterpoint

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing Outlander. Showverse insofar as Jamie took a beating from Roger, otherwise slots just as easily into bookverse. Gabaldon didn’t write it, I needed it, and here we are.
> 
> FYI, if strong sexual content is not your jam (I mean… I’m side-eyeing you a little bit, because… it’s Outlander?), you’re safe to read up to “Grinning, he obliged.” After that, it’s decidedly NSFW. When it comes to Jamie and Claire, I’m a nonbeliever in fade-to-black.

Jamie hadn’t spoken in hours.

He sat ramrod straight in the saddle, eyes fixed stubbornly on the trail ahead of us. Those damned inscrutable Mackenzie features were set in a mask of stone; only the intermittent twitch of his ring finger gave any hint of the turmoil brewing beneath the surface.

Truth be told, though, I understood his desire for silence. In the aftermath of the past twenty-four hours, I, too, needed some time to process, to catalogue my thoughts, do a quick inventory of my own emotional needs, and talk myself through them toward whatever sort of resolution my logical mind could supply.

I’d done a fair job of it by the time our horses crested a ridge into a broad, flat clearing, flanked by a creek on one side and a copse of dense beech trees on the other. A flash of recognition lit my face; we’d stayed in this clearing before, on the journey north. I cast a questioning glance at Jamie as he brought his horse to a halt, surveying the area thoughtfully.

“What do you think?” I asked, reining my own bay mare alongside him.

He squinted up at the late afternoon sun. “It’s early yet, but I dinna reckon we’ll find a better spot than this in the next few miles.”

“Probably not. The horses are pretty well done in, anyway,” I said, reaching down to pat my mount’s sweaty neck.

“Right. Let’s make camp here, then.”

We tethered the horses by the stream, giving them ample lead rope to drink and graze whilst Jamie and I set about unpacking the saddle bags. The task had become muscle memory by now: we wove back and forth across the clearing, dropping the leather packs and blanket rolls in a vague estimation of where they’d belong, then moving wordlessly alongside one another as we unfurled the canvas tent and hammered the wooden frame poles into the earth. Once the tent was up, I struck out to collect firewood while Jamie went to tend the horses.

Perhaps half an hour later, he strolled back over to find me stoking a fledgling campfire. His steps faltered just outside the ring of firelight. I glanced up at him in the same moment he looked down at me, an expression of pained revelation passing between us.

Young Ian would normally be joining us back at camp right about now, triumphantly brandishing a line of fresh-caught fish for our supper.

I watched the Adam’s apple bob in Jamie’s throat as he glanced over at the creek.

“It’s all right,” I said, so softly I wasn’t sure he heard me. “We have enough here for supper. There are corn dodgers, still, and a bit of salt pork, I think.” When he didn’t respond, I said again, “Jamie. It’s all right.”

After a long moment, he spoke without turning, his voice nearly unrecognizable. “Aye… it’ll have to be.”

I opened my mouth and shut it again, searching for words of comfort that I couldn’t yet find. I watched with a strained look of helplessness as he moved brusquely around the fire and began to rummage through the saddlebag containing our provisions. He pulled out a few of the stale, crumbling corn dodgers, handed two to me, then withdrew the oiled paper bundle containing the last of the salt pork. His lips tightened into a white line when he pulled back the corner to find only one strip left. Unhesitatingly, he passed it over to me.

“Jamie—”

“It’s fine, Sassenach.” His fingers closed briefly over mine. “I’m no’ hungry just now.”

“You will be,” I assured him, with a pointed glance at the mottling of fresh bruises that was just visible below the neckline of his shirt. “Healing is hungry work, you know. If you don’t have some protein, your stomach will have something to say about it in the middle of the night.”

Jamie made a Scottish noise of derision. Still, he didn’t stop me when I ripped the piece of salt pork apart with a thumbnail and handed half of it back to him. More to appease me than anything, he sat down by the fire and proceeded to eat his meager meal in a few careful bites.

 _Too_ careful, I thought. With a practiced eye, I noted the way he moved the food around his mouth to avoid the left side entirely. Somewhere in the barrage of furious punches he’d endured that afternoon, he’d probably caught his teeth against the inside of his cheek.

Grateful for the opportunity to make myself useful, I wiped the stale cornmeal crumbs from the front of my blouse and got up to go rummage in my box of herbs and medical supplies. After a bit of puttering, I set a kettle of cherry bark and comfrey tea over the fire to steep. I turned back to my husband, then, armed with a damp cloth and a jar of coneflower salve.

“Right. Let’s have a look at you, then.” I raised my chin at him with an air of authority.   

Though he shot me a look that plainly said he thought the inspection unnecessary, Jamie heaved himself to his feet and obediently stripped off his cravat, vest, and shirt. I caught the twitch at the corner of his mouth as he did so – an acknowledgment of the absurd frequency with which we had performed this ritual since we first met. No sooner had the spark of humor lit his face, though, than it died again, the glaze returning to his eyes as he stared over my shoulder into the fire.

 _One thing at a time, Beauchamp,_ I reminded myself. This was triage; the physical wounds came first.

Once I’d performed a thorough assessment and determined all of the damage to be superficial – no splintered ribs, no pneumothorax, no ruptured spleen, no internal bleeding – I set about tending him, probing and palpating, cleansing and salving methodically from left to right, proximal to distal, head to toe. The ribs on his left side had borne the worst of it; they were a splotched purple mess, and nothing to be done about it. On a more positive note, at least none of the wounds would require stitching.

As the final measure in my examination, I made Jamie open his mouth. After ensuring that he hadn’t lost any teeth, I peeled back the flange of his lip to check for the contusion I suspected was there. Sure enough, he’d made a good bite-sized indentation on the inside of his cheek. He winced and gave a sharp “Aah!” as I probed a fingertip experimentally around the buccal mucosa. While I was sure that it stung a bit, it was a superficial laceration, and would heal up nicely on its own. Satisfied with my findings, I finally released my husband’s lip and gave his opposite cheek a pat.

“You’ll live, soldier,” I told him, the corner of my mouth curling affectionately. Despite himself, his slanted blue eyes softened just a bit. “And the tea will help with that,” I added, with a nod to his bitten cheek.

“Mmphm.” He eased gingerly down in front of the fire, shrugging his shirt back over his head while I went to pour the tea. A few moments later, I passed him a steaming copper mug and sat down on the grass beside him. It took a bit of maneuvering, but we eventually managed to ease ourselves together, shifting our limbs one by one until we sat hip-to-hip, with his arm behind me and my head on his shoulder.

Feeling warm and safe, I closed my eyes and listened to the soft blow of his breath on the tea, the merry crackle of the fire, the rustling movements of our horses and the gurgle of the creek a few feet beyond. Taken together, the sounds melded into a lovely, tranquil background of white noise that typically would have lulled me to sleep within moments. After two days of minimal sleep, hard riding, and emotional upheaval, God knows I was exhausted enough to slip into unconsciousness at the earliest given opportunity.

Still, I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until I’d spoken to Jamie — or rather, until he’d spoken to me. Despite our physical closeness, he was still completely closed off from me, shuttered behind glassy eyes. I knew my husband, though; I knew with absolute certainty that he was drowning in guilt, taking the weight of the world on his shoulders, regardless of whether or not it was his burden to bear. Locked within the solitude of his mind, the stubborn Scot was intent upon wallowing in an agony of his own making.

And damned if I was going to let him.

My mind made up, I shifted in Jamie’s arms, angling myself toward him. I took the half-empty mug from his hands and set it aside. Then, slowly and deliberately, I traced a fingertip along the curve of his jaw, took hold of his chin, and pulled his mouth down to mine.

The breath went out of him in a shuddering gust, and I eased in closer, sliding my tongue languidly against his — soothing, coaxing. It worked; muscle by muscle I felt him begin to relax, to mold against me as I kissed him, slow and deep.

When we broke for air, I held fast to him, refusing to let him get far. “Stay,” I whispered, my lips brushing his, breathing the same air. “Stay with me, Jamie. I’m right here.” _Don’t shut me out again._

He understood. His hand pressed into the small of my back, holding me to him. He nuzzled up my nose and over the ridge of my brow before coming to rest at my temple. For a long time we were silent, but it was comfortable, now – connected.

I held on to him, and waited.

When Jamie finally did speak, his voice was whisper-soft, barely a murmur against my hair. “I was there the day he was born, ye ken.”

There was no need to ask who he meant. I shook my head a little, burrowing into the solid muscle of his neck. “Mm-mm,” I hummed. “You never told me that.”

“Hm.” He drew in a slow, deep breath, and released it as a sigh. Without breaking contact, he eased down the curve of my neck and laid his head on my shoulder. “I was living in the cave back then. Wee Fergus came to fetch me when Jenny started havin’ her pains. She would ha’ blistered his hide if she’d known. There was a Redcoat patrol garrisoned just outside Broch Mordha, and a new captain keen to make a name for himself. They’d taken Ian again, three weeks past. I kent it was a risk coming home, but I thought… since he couldna be there for Jenny, and I couldna be there for you, with Brianna…”

I turned my lips into his skin, kissing him softly. “That you should be there for your sister.”

“Aye.” He fell into a pensive silence for a moment, then he sat back, facing me, and gave a quiet chuckle. “Fair lot of good it did her, though. I mostly just paced about the barn wi’ the lads, feelin’ useless.”

I smiled. “I think that’s about the extent of what most menfolk can do, when it comes to birthing babies. Worry and wait.”

“Mmphm. I did a braw job of that.”

We both made a little hum of laughter, then lapsed into silence again, lost in our own memories.

“I remember… Ian’s poor wee head was all bruised and misshapen when I first saw him. Like a melon that’d been kicked in a bit.” Jamie’s mouth twitched in a half-smile. He brought his palms up in front of him, cupping the memory of the baby he’d loved. “His whole body fit in my two hands. I’d never held any of Jenny’s other bairns when they were so small. I worrit I’d break him every time I moved.”

The sad, longing smile on his face made my own throat burn with grief. Needing to touch him, I reached up and stroked a finger absently along the soft stubble of his chin. Jamie’s eyes slipped shut at my touch, and he leaned slightly into my hand. His voice was a grated murmur when he spoke again.

“He isna my son. I know that. But…I think it’s… it’s mebbe that I had all of this love stored up in me for our bairns, ye ken, achin’ to get out. And then there he was, this wee thing in my arms, so fragile you could see the pulse in his head. I’d kent him all of three minutes, and already I knew I’d die to protect him. I thought… perhaps that wasna so different from what a father feels, when he holds his bairn for the first time.”

One by one, I felt the muscles of my heart begin to strain and snap. My hand fell from his face as I turned away, desperately trying to knit myself back together before he noticed.

Jamie and I had made a point of setting aside the regret and bitterness of our twenty year separation – convinced ourselves there was no sense dwelling on the pain, when there was so much joy to be found now. But sometimes… sometimes the surge of violent grief struck without warning, as sudden and crushing as an ocean wave. I was drowning in it, now. The fact that Jamie had never been able to hold either of our babies to his heart, to rock them, breathe in their scent, kiss their wisps of soft red hair… that pain, that grief was as raw now as it had been the day each of our girls were born. It shook me to my core, when I let it… so I didn’t often let it.

But two warm hands were suddenly on my cheeks, drawing me back, and I opened my eyes reluctantly to find the same unfathomable heartbreak mirrored in eyes of the man I loved. There was no choice but to surrender to it, then – to share it with him, carry it, as we’d promised. Jamie’s eyes searched my glass face for a long moment, and then he dropped his forehead against mine with a quiet, sobbing breath that shattered what little composure I had left.

“I keep losing them, Claire,” he whispered, his brow furrowing against mine. “Faith. Brianna. Willie. All the children of my flesh and blood, and now the children of my heart, as well.” A single tear quivered in his eyelashes, but didn’t fall. “Joanie, Marsali… young Ian. Canna help but think this must be God’s way of telling me I’m no’ meant to be a father.”

I took his head fiercely in my own hands, then, forcing him to meet my tear-blurred glare. “If that’s so, then God is a bloody idiot.”

“ _Sassenach_ ,” Jamie half-groaned, half-laughed, quickly crossing himself.

“Well!” I laughed, too, if only because it was better than sobbing, and I was very, very close to that. “It’s true! _If_ God did think that, which I don’t for a moment believe He does. Nor, for the record, do I.” I kissed Jamie soundly on the lips, then, twice. “And as the mother of your children, I feel as though my opinion should hold considerable weight in the matter.”

“Aye,” Jamie agreed, with a trembling smile. He reached up to brush a strand of hair behind my ear, his eyes shining with devotion. “Aye, I suppose it should.”

“Then you listen to me, James Fraser, and listen good.” I clasped his hand in mine, bringing it to my heart. “You are a _wonderful_ father. To Bree, and to Willie, and young Ian and Fergus and all the rest. You are kind, and selfless, and bloody heroic in your efforts to protect them.” _Too heroic, sometimes,_ I thought, with a pointed glance in the direction of his bruised ribs. Jamie followed my gaze and gave a little grunt, but looked unconvinced. I kissed him again, for good measure. “And more than any of that, you love them, fiercely and unconditionally. That’s the most important part, you know.”

“And the hardest,” Jamie admitted. He sighed deeply, his whole body deflating on the exhale. “Do ye remember when I told ye, a long time ago, that I could bear my own pain, but not yours? It’s like that with the children, too. I’d take a thousand beatings if it would spare Brianna a bit of pain, but there’s no’ anything I can do for her now. Our daughter’s happiness rests entirely in the hands of that wee ingrate, Roger. I’ve never felt more helpless in my life.”

“Welcome to parenthood,” I said dryly.

Jamie made a guttural sound of discontent, but something shifted behind his eyes, too; I could almost see the cogs of his brain working to process that thought. I let him sit with it for a moment before squeezing his hand, drawing him back out from his private musings.

“They’re going to be alright, you know.” I gave him a half-smile, looking him earnestly in the eye. “Ian has been on this path for some time… ever since we met John Quincy Myers. This was always going to be where he wound up. You know that.” Jamie didn’t bother to deny it; after a moment, he gave a terse nod of agreement. “He’ll be happy with the Mohawk, I think. And it’s not as if we can’t see him again. I’m sure there will be opportunities for him to travel down to North Carolina with the trading parties.”

“Aye. That’s true enough.”

“And as for Bree…” I threaded my fingers restlessly around and through Jamie’s, just as worried for our daughter as he was. “Roger may still come back for her. We don’t know that he won’t.” I caught Jamie’s glare, and ignored it. “But if he doesn’t… then we’ll take her home. Help her raise our grandchild. Do everything in our power to support her, and give her time to heal. And she will, with time.”

Jamie nodded slowly, but his fingers continued to writhe in a fretful dance with mine. Of course, I realized how hollow the words were as soon as they were out of my mouth. I could almost hear the echo of my own voice, defying that naive maternal optimism:

_That amount of time doesn’t exist._

Jamie and I both knew what it meant to live with a broken heart. The hard truth of it was that the pain never went away.

Neither of us wanted that for our daughter.

I pretended that the sting in my eyes was from the campfire smoke, and stared hard into the flames until I could bring it back under control. After a moment, a calloused finger touched my chin, instantly denying any chance of that.

Jamie turned me to face him with the crook of a finger, gently thumbing away an unshed tear. His eyes brimmed with such heartbreaking tenderness that my chin began to quiver. He could read my face like an open book, and at the moment, I was infinitely grateful not to have to explain myself. Despite all my words of comfort, I, too, was heartsick for all that we’d lost, and all that might still be lost, if…

“Come here, _mo nighean donn_.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I climbed into Jamie’s lap with a trembling breath, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt like a lifeline. He cradled me against him — large, strong fingers slotted into my ribs and buried in my hair. His lips brushed slowly across my forehead, Gaelic mumurings interspersed with fluttering kisses, delicate as dragonfly wings.

“I dinna think I’ve told ye recently enough how much you mean to me, my Sassenach.” Jamie’s voice was quiet, but pitched so deep that I could feel it rumbling in his chest. He had begun unconsciously to rock me, his hand rubbing in slow circles at the small of my back. “It’s no’ that I ever forget, only… I dinna how to say it out loud wi’out sounding like a fool.” He was silent for a moment, and I could almost hear the internal struggle as he grappled to find the right words. My own throat was too thick to dare speak, so I simply wrapped my arms around him and squeezed. It was enough. He squeezed back, laid his head against mine, and spoke from his heart.

“You’re a fine healer, Claire, but it’s something more than that, with me. You ken how to mend my heart as sure as my wounds. To quiet my soul. It’s as though you’re Christ Himself, calmin’ the sea with naught but a word.” He smiled, pulling back just far enough to touch his forehead to mine. “So, there, ye see... I’m as blasphemous as you, and may I burn in Hell with ye for it.”  

“Jamie,” I breathed, and kissed him desperately. When my oxygen-starved lungs were ready to burst I broke away, gasping and sniffling, and clung to him. I rubbed my face on his shoulder, laughing despite myself. “Are you bound and determined to make me cry tonight?”

“Na,” he chuckled, rubbing a hand up and down my spine. “Well, mebbe a little. But mostly I just meant to try to tell you how much I love ye.”

I sat back far enough to look him in the eye, still smiling brokenly through my tears. “I love you too.” I choked on a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, running my fingers over his face. “You bloody bastard, I love you too. Stop talking and kiss me.”

Grinning, he obliged.

It became apparent quite quickly that there were going to be several distinct advantages to being empty-nesters; just the two of us, alone, on the road, for the next two months. The few romantic trysts Jamie and I had attempted on the trek north had been quick, frenzied, and often aborted hastily when our nephew returned sooner than expected from a hunting or fishing excursion. More often than I cared to recall, the damn wolf-dog had come bounding up to the two of us, still entwined, barking madly and causing us to scramble to re-dress before young Ian caught up to his mongrel.

But now…

Alone in the wilderness, with no one around for miles, there was no need to be hasty, or to smother the sounds of our pleasure in each other’s necks or shoulders. Admittedly, there was a sort of wicked thrill to sneaking around like rebellious teenagers, but tonight would be something else entirely. For what felt like the first time in _ages_ , Jamie and I could dedicate ourselves fully and thoroughly to the task of making love to one another.

That is, if we could slow ourselves down long enough to do so.

At the moment, Jamie was obediently fulfilling his edict not to speak; his mouth was otherwise occupied with its torturous descent down the column of my neck, alternately nipping at the skin and then soothing the sting with an expert flick of his tongue. I was a puddle underneath him, helpless to do anything but breathe and arch and gasp. My hands roamed the crisscrossing scars of his back restlessly before reaching underneath the waistband of his breeks, seeking purchase in the lean muscle of his buttocks. Finding it, I pulled him down to me, hard, desperately seeking the friction of him between my legs.

With a hiss of surprise, Jamie detached his mouth from my collarbone just long enough to raise an eyebrow and shoot me a devilish grin. He dropped even lower, then, opening the neck of my blouse, fastening his lips around my nipple, and giving a deft little _tug_. 

We were rather frantic after that – panting open-mouthed against any bit of skin we could find, scrambling to remove whichever item of clothing met with our blind, groping fingers. It was perhaps not the most effective means of accomplishing our goal; after a few minutes of this, Jamie’s belt buckle wound up hopelessly ensnared in my bootstrap, and after struggling uselessly to free it, we both collapsed in a tangled heap, giggling like children.

When I caught my breath, still bursting occasionally into little _pfft_ s of laughter, I sat up, my knee bent awkwardly at an angle over his waist. “Jamie! Mmf… Aah! Hold _still_ , you big oaf! Let me.” With a surgeon’s precision – and a slightly clearer head – I managed to extricate our buckles, and kick my foot free of my boot. The other boot followed in swift pursuit, followed by my stockings, and then I reclined back on one elbow, stark naked, wiggling my toes gleefully in the grass. It was summer, and still pleasantly warm even as evening fell around us, but a light breeze stirred the trees and whispered over my bare skin, raising goosebumps all down the length of me. The effect wasn’t helped at all by the sight of my husband, finally stripped down to his skin as well, crawling toward me on his hands and knees with a ravenous gleam in his eyes.         

Our temporary setback had done nothing at all to stay his want for me, and the sight of it made me lick my lips subconsciously. Jamie saw it, and smirked. Apparently the gesture inspired a similar inclination in him, for he suddenly changed the direction of his approach – he _had_ been coming for my mouth – and settled himself between my legs. I was already trembling when he slipped a large hand beneath my knee, guiding it up and over his shoulder.

When his tongue darted out to taste me, slick and warm and gloriously rough, a forked lightning bolt of pleasure shot from our contact point and out through my nerves, threatening to throw me over the edge with alarming speed. I made a shrieking gasp, my fingers grabbing for his hair, trying frantically to pull him closer. I felt Jamie smile against me, but he was utterly merciless; his hand locked tight on my knee, steadying me, as he took his sweet… bloody… time with that expert mouth of his. He suckled and stroked, swirled and nipped until I saw white, gasping raggedly and arching into him like a woman possessed. He knew what I wanted, and would begin to give it to me, only to slide his tongue away at the last moment, teasing and withdrawing until I was practically sobbing with need.   

“God, Jamie… _Jamie_ , please!”

I wanted to scream in frustration when my plea resulted in the exact opposite effect of what I intended; he pulled back lazily, releasing his hold on my knee, and rested his cheek against my inner thigh, smirking like the cat who got the canary.

“Did ye need something, Sassenach?” he asked, eyes twinkling. That vile little _wretch_.

Glaring daggers at him – admittedly, the effect slightly lessened by the fact that my mouth twitched traitorously, wanting to smile – I pushed myself up to a sitting position, then onto my knees, straddling him.

“Proud of yourself, are you?” I quipped, skimming my fingers over the hard ridges of his abdomen.

“Mmhmm,” he hummed, positively beaming. “Am I going to regret it?”

I didn’t bother to answer him. I bit him instead, sinking my teeth into an unblemished spot (I wasn’t a _complete_ sadist) in his solid pectoral muscle. Jamie jerked up in surprise, but I was ready for him, bringing an elbow down over his shoulder to pin him.

“Ouch! _Sassenach!_ ”

I released his flesh with as innocent a look as I could muster, licking the angry reddened skin languidly. “Hmm. Sorry, how clumsy of me. Did you want me to stop, or?...”

Before he could answer, I snaked a hand down between his legs and began to tug expertly at his straining erection. Jamie made a choking sound, gasped, and rolled his eyes shut. I continued my ministrations for a few seconds, kissing down the right side of his belly. When his breathing began to grow staccato with need, I suddenly stilled my hand and bit down on a nice solid ridge of _rectus abdominis_.

“Jesus GOD, Claire!” Jamie yelped, bolting upright.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, leaning in to kiss him. “I’m sorry, darling,” I murmured into his mouth, grinning. “Did you need something?”

He glowered at me for a moment, but couldn’t keep up the facade for long. Snorting with laughter, he took my face in my hands. “Ye recall what I said about vixens and being bit? I take it back.”

“Oh, duly noted,” I said, and went back to kissing him. Our little game neatly ended in a tie, we came together without pretense, trusting that the heat that rose between us now would be allowed to boil over to completion.

It was going to be rather a slow simmer, I learned after some trial and error; Jamie’s initial thought process carried through to this next phase, evident in the slow, deliberate way he kissed me, gentling me any time I started to become too frantic. Without any words at all, I began to understand... he wanted to take his time with me, to linger here together for as long as we possibly could; to make love, not simply seek the carnal pleasure of sex.

Humbled and a bit emotional at his thoughtfulness (and perhaps a bit sorry I’d called him a vile wretch, if only in my head), I made a conscious effort to breathe, to listen to the common language of our bodies, to relish each taste and texture and sensation.

I willingly surrendered to the press of Jamie’s body as he laid me down beneath him, the summer grass a sensuous tickle along my bare back. Our lips touched once, twice, before I opened to him in invitation. A little hum of pleasure vibrated between us as his tongue slid into my mouth, seeking and tasting. His hands were buried in my hair at first, but they began to roam lazily along the planes of my body, first cupping my breasts, then smoothing along my abdomen, over the curve of my hips, down my thighs and…

I cried out when he entered me, whimpering brokenly into his mouth. Jamie’s arms were shaking with restraint on either side of me, holding his torso up as he sank into me inch by inch. He needn’t have been so careful; I was half-gone already, aching from his earlier attentions, heated and slick and more than ready for him. I rose beneath him helpfully, hugging my thighs to his hips and angling my pelvis to take him in deeper. Our mouths broke apart, gasping, as I sheathed him fully, stretched to the point of exquisite torture.  

For a moment we were completely still, adjusting to the feeling of one another, so close and so deep that I wasn’t sure where he ended and I began. My eyes had been closed with concentration; when I opened them, I found Jamie staring at me, eyes burning with a love so powerful that I nearly shattered then and there. I couldn’t have looked away if I wanted to; I was utterly captivated by the sight of that ring of brilliant blue around pupils blown wide with desire. Unblinking, I reached up to hold his face in my fingertips.

Driven by primal forces far beyond our understanding, we began to move together in the same moment. Jamie didn’t pull back from me at all, at first; he simply rocked with me, the movement so slight that it barely stirred the grass beneath us.

The third time we moved, he dropped his forehead to mine, moaning softly.

He put his lips to mine the sixth time, probing and gentle and sweet.

The tenth time, he whispered my name against my mouth, and I was undone.

He kissed me down from my shuddering release, smiling all the while. For the life of me I could not begin to understand his restraint; he held perfectly still inside me, waiting out the waves of my ecstasy before daring to resume the pursuit of his own. Before he did, Jamie’s eyes sought mine, questioning. Breathing out shakily through pursed lips, I nodded encouragement, bracing myself for round two.     

Whatever inhuman restraint had been possessing him, he finally accepted my permission to let go of it. There was nothing gentle about the way we came together now; Jamie scooped me up and drove into me hard and fast, his muscled chest heaving with the effort. His mouth was open and hot against mine; we were too far gone to kiss, but we moaned and panted together, sharing each other’s air. Sooner than I would ever have imagined, the blood in my veins began to sing again, and I was grabbing frantically at him, trying to get him deeper. Finally, unable to help myself, I sat up in his arms, grinding myself into him with each fevered thrust. I was close, so close… if Jamie’s desperate, hitching breaths were any indication, he was too. I grabbed his arms to anchor me and  put my teeth into his shoulder, incoherent cries ripping from my throat.

“Come with me,” I gasped. “Come with me this time, Jamie...”

He nodded, clutching to me for dear life. His hands pressed into my spine, pulling me against him as he thrust home, two, three, four more times…

 _Five_...

I spiraled, lost over the precipice into excruciating pleasure, stars exploding behind my eyes. I cried out raggedly, his name a sob on my lips. As I clenched and shook around him, Jamie reared back, the veins in his neck and arms straining as he let out a final rasping groan. His broken voice rose in counterpoint to mine, “Claire… Christ, God, _Claire_ –”   

We fell together, shuddering and gasping and boneless, as he lost himself in me.

It seemed a long time before I became aware of my body again; the sky was spinning precariously above me, as though the earth had come slightly unhinged sometime in the last few minutes.

 _Maybe it did,_ I thought absently, blinking to clear the haze. It wouldn’t have been the first time the laws of physics had warped to accommodate us.

The fingertips of my left hand were tingling. I turned my head, still dizzy, and found them stirring the soft chestnut hairs on Jamie’s chest. He was staring intently up at the stars, his body still shaking. I wondered if the sky was tilting for him too.

I smiled dreamily at the thought, and scooted closer.

Jamie’s head turned, then, to look at me. For a long time we simply stared at one another, quietly awestruck. Then he reached a hand out for mine, and I gave it to him. Palm to palm, we slid our fingers over one another, a gesture as old as our love. _This_ , what it was between us…

 _It will be alright now._ The peaceful thought came unbidden, as my eye caught one of the bruises on Jamie’s ribs, just below our linked hands.

Trouble was certain to find us… it had found us today. It would find us tomorrow too, or the next day, or the next. Our love never promised immunity from pain, or sorrow, or heartbreak, or death – only that we would never suffer them alone.

We had beat insurmountable odds before, the two of us. Whatever obstacles fate threw at us going forward, I knew in my bones that Jamie and I could overcome them, so long as we had each other. _This._

I pressed my lips softly to his bruised ribs – already beginning to yellow at the edges with healing – and then laid my head down over Jamie’s heart.

We fell asleep, then, palm to palm.     

 


End file.
